In subfreezing climates such as in Canada, precipitations may include snow and freezing rain. When temperatures shift above and below the freezing point during day/night cycles, ground snow may melt as liquid water or slush during the day and re-freeze as ground ice during the night. Freezing rain also produces ground ice as it impacts ground. Ground ice on roads and boardwalks constitute a major hazard for automobiles and pedestrians, as it becomes very slippery. Typically, abrasive material such as sand or melting powders such as salt compounds can be used to mitigate ground snow. However, snow and ice scraping tractors are also needed to scrape snow and ice and push this scraped snow and ice sideways of the road or boardwalk, so as to attempt to remove surface ice. Ground snow is relatively easy to remove, but ground ice is much more difficult, at it “fuses” with the underlying ground asphalt or cement of the road or boardwalk. Municipalities have an official duty to make reasonable efforts in clearing snow and ice from boardwalks in particular, but as happens regularly, ground ice buildup can happen suddenly and temporarily overwhelm their ground ice clearing capabilities.
There have been identified deficiencies in the performance of conventional boardwalk ice scraping tractors. One deficiency is that ice scraping tractors have an unfortunate tendency to skid sideways of their travelling path and fall off from the boardwalk where they are working, as they sustain heavy shearing loads from the ground ice they are attempting to forcibly remove. Another deficiency is that the lower scraping leading edge of the plow blade can quickly become damaged because of the abuse from the shearing loads with hardened ground ice. Also, the weight of prior art ice scraping plows tend to be quite small, compromising their ground ice removing effectiveness.